


Scarlet Woman

by ambiguously



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-07
Updated: 2012-05-07
Packaged: 2017-11-05 00:01:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/399681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/pseuds/ambiguously
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She thinks in colors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scarlet Woman

She thinks in colors: red, blue, green, black.

There's red in her ledger, red on her hands, red in her soul. She's no ingenue in white, and she never was, not mixed with the crimson blood. She thinks the brilliant joker in red and yellow understands her best in that, how you don't forget old sins, you fight through them, you wash them away with your own sweat.

Blue is a different kind of purity, a heart-blood waiting to breathe. That little girl she rescued last week wore bright blue socks. The idealistic old man in the young soldier's suit is an innocent blue, covered away from her kind of past. There's envy inside her, but not much. Innocence is that quality which is destined to be lost. The demigod is blue and yellow, unsure of this world but bloody-minded enough to shove through anyway. Perhaps yellow is boldness. She wouldn't be surprised.

She never covers her own anger in green, never lets loose her own rage. She can't. She needs her brain, her cunning, her skills, and all of those will be lost under an emerald tide and she will die. So in a way, she envies the monster as well. He can be a genius and he can be more, and he won't die of either.

Her best friend used to favor purple, but they're both past that now. Purple means hope, and they have none. They have black. They have the absence of hope, the absence of anger, the dark midnight of innocence. But in her heart, black has another meaning, the one thinks when she says her name.

Black is what she envies most: all debts repaid and the ledger shut for good.


End file.
